My bud Cameron Clark scored this great "award winner" shot at one of her recent weddings.   Nice work Amiga!    I like how she thought she had a problem and turned it into a SURE solution!

Cameron writes:

This photo was made with flash flavor in mind.  As I recall the groom's brother jumped up during dinner unexpectedly... so we dropped our forks, busted out the fasted solution, the Canon ST-E2 transmitter and one 580EX flash on E-TTL slave... I do use Pocket Wizards but this was an "in a pinch" moment and the PW weren't plugged and tested, so I went for what I knew I could pull off FAST. My business partner and expert lighting tech, Jamelle Kelly, was working the Canon 580EX on a mono pod for me. She set the flash to slave and I put my 70-200mm f2.8 on my Canon Mark II 1D.  I love to shoot toasting and dancing with the long lens so I am a bit more stealth. 

I was cursing the fact that the bride and groom were so close to the wall during their toasting because I was getting nasty shadows at almost every angle, then suddenly I thought, "USE IT: Flash Flavor, baby!"   Jamelle was standing on the opposite side of the groom's brother in a direct line to the B&G. She drilled the brother's shadow on the wall and also threw a little light onto the couple.  What I love is that the canon system read all this E-TTL (though the lens). I do believe Jamelle had to adjust the flash up to +1 stops to give it more punch. What really made this work was getting the light at the correct angle on the bride and groom so THEIR shadow was NOT on the wall. Also by using a long lens to "compress" the final image and of course snapping a bunch of frames to get the mic and paper in the shadow. I have a lot of frames without the mic and paper and it just doesn't read as well.  This shot was made at 1/15 sec at f3.2,  ISO 400 at 155mm.

little tip:  make sure you and your flash assistant have some signals that you can throw across the room (think baseball style) and still get the shot in less than a minute.  You need a CYA (cover your A$*) plan and the Flash Flavor plan.  I think the reason people fail to try new things is they are too concerned they might not get the safe shot..so get your safe shot, AND try something new. To pull this stuff off, you need precision, teamwork, GREAT communication and a little luck. Kudos to Jamelle and thanks to Joni and James, my lovely bride and groom. 

I'm down with this, great to see your awesome contribution to FF AMIGA!!!!

Cheers!
matt